Announcements

On 17 September 2020, two weeks after WEMov’s kick-off, Igor Lyman (Berdyansk State Pedagogical University, Ukraine) gave a public lecture entitled “Women on the Move: Berdyansk Context”. Igor’s lecture raised gender issues in the migration history of the port city of Berdyansk and evoked the biographies of Amy E. Greaves Sudermann Enss, Jane Wilhemenia Greaves and Helena Jansen – women whose life trajectories are compelling case studies of Berdyansk transnational connections outside Ukraine. The public lecture was held within the framework of the History Fest organized by the project “What is Your History?”.

Following the lecture, in October of 2020, Igor Lyman also organized an outdoor exhibition of photographs of women migrants in the courtyard of the main building of Berdyansk State Pedagogical University. It featured old family photos and family stories of women migrants who once moved to Berdyansk. These initiatives are perfectly in keeping with WEMov’s objectives, and especially WG2’s focus on memory.

Finally, we are happy to announce that our colleagues from Bulgaria, Petko Hristov and Niya Spasova, have been granted funding support for their project « Woman labor mobility – past and present », by the National fund of Scientific Research of the Bulgarian Ministry of Education and Science. This is part of the national program supporting the participation of Bulgaria in COST Action “Women on the Move” (WEMov) to build an interdisciplinary network of researchers focused on historical and contemporary women workers’ mobility. A two-year project (2021-2022), it will allow WEMov’s participants from Bulgaria, Petko Hristov and Niya Spasova, to complete field research on women’s labor mobility in Bulgaria as well as in historical archives. The shooting of 4 documentaries is also planned, with interviews of transborder women labor migrants, and this will contribute to the work of WEMov’s WG4.